


Skinship

by quicksparrows



Series: For Emmy – Frederick x Rosella [5]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 01:51:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4203429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frederick and his wife have a quiet Sunday picnic with a bit of touching and talking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skinship

**Author's Note:**

> For Emmy, who has a wild thing for Frederick and keeps messaging me with trumpet emojis any time I suggest I'm writing something with him. And also for Fates, which is going to be even fucking wilder. What the fuck lmao.

 

 

 

 

It's a sunny Sunday afternoon, out in the orchard behind the palace at Ylisstol. They've found a little spot under a tree to laze after their picnic, shaded and with plenty of apples within arm's reach. The remnants of their lunches are already neatly packed away in the basket, and the horses mill around grazing. It's a little slice of heaven, sandwiched between a Saturday full of council meetings and an upcoming Monday with yet more planning for Chrom's wedding. 

Sunday is always a welcome reprieve from capitol affairs.

Frederick dozes quietly, head in her lap. Rosella is quiet, too, engrossed in a book that she leaves propped up beside her — better a tense neck than using her poor lover's face as a book holder, she's sure.

As she reads, she absently strokes his hair. It is getting long again; Frederick always wears his hair a bit longer in winter, and though autumn has only just barely started to creep up on them, his hair is already sweeping his ears.

She's momentarily distracted from her book when he sighs, and she watches his eyes shift under his pale eyelids, his thick brows furrowing a touch.

"Am I annoying you?" she asks, stilling her fingers in his hair, one lock still twisted around her index finger.

"No," he murmurs. "I'm just sore."

"Sore from what?" Rosella asks. "There's never been so little to be sore about, with Gangrel dead and Plegia at peace."

Frederick grumbles.

"It takes more than a month to ease the sores of war, my dear," he says.

"Well, I am a tactician and falcon rider and your wife, and at least one of those things makes me an expert at easing your sores," Rosella says. "Tell me what I can do."

"You are doing me plenty of kindness as it is," he says. "Just keep..." He makes a vague hand gesture.

Rosella smiles, leaning to hang her face over his for a moment, her vanilla-pink hair falling around their faces.

"Are you saying you want me to fuss over you, Mr. No PDA?"

"Do you see anyone else in this orchard?" he asks.

"No," she says.

"Then do as you will," Frederick says.

Rosella giggles, and she runs a finger across the ridge of his brow. 

"What is so funny?" he says. He opens his eyes, then; his eyes as brown as his long, thick eyelashes, and though his mouth is in its usual neutral line, his eyes say he's amused.

"I just think it's cute," she says. "You want to lay here in the grass while I pet you."

"I wouldn't have put it like that," he says.

 "Of course not," she tells him.

No one else thinks Frederick is cute like she does; true, Frederick himself has told her that he had never been called cute in his entire life before she'd declared it. But Rosella cares little what other people think is cute: Cute isn't a basket of puppies at the market or a little child saying something precious or fat birds hopping through the grass when they could be flying -- it's a way of being for Rosella, a way of seeing life, and Frederick fits her vision perfectly.

 She knows her "cute" is the best. 

And really, how isn't Frederick cute? 

Frederick is cute when he fusses after every cut and scrape she gets on the battlefield. He is cute when he folds his pants before climbing into bed with her, and when he folds down the covers for her every night. He is cute when he tolerates her pickiness at the dinner table, but patient when she doesn't tolerate his. He is cute when he gets the slightest bit flustered when she beats him to some minimal task he generally does: passing Chrom the sugar, folding the laundry, replacing her own books on the bookshelves. He is cute when he does something stupid but pretends it never happened even though she saw it happen. He is cute when he sleeps in his matching pajama sets and how even his housecoat is pressed and he never walks around their quarters in the castle unless he has both socks and slippers on.

He is even cute when, after eating her out, he stops to wipe his mouth off with a freshly-laundered handkerchief before he kisses her again. (Not that she'd care, but Frederick is a gentleman.)   

There's no other way of putting it for Rosella. He's just a cute man.

Rosella pets his cheek and Frederick hums under his breath, and she begins to trace the contour of his face with one finger. His cheekbones are high and sharp, and the hard line of his brow slopes into his long, straight nose. 

"You know, I've always loved your eyebrows," she tells him. 

"Oh?" he says.

"They're very shapely," she says. "Most men don't groom their eyebrows, but you do a good job of it."

"Most men are somewhat lax in their personal hygiene routines," Frederick remarks. He lets Rosella run a finger over his lips, and then he says: "Most men neglect routine in general."

"That's why I married you," Rosella says. "You're handsome and you know how to take care of yourself."

"So you've told me, many times," he says. There's a twitch of a smile at the corners of his mouth, and he reaches up to take her meandering hand. He laces his fingers with hers and presses the back of her hand against his cheek.

"You have such good bone structure," she says, still fawning. "We're going to have beautiful babies some day."

That gets Frederick to smile a little more.

"We will," he says. "I'm looking forward to that. I hope they inherit your ears, however. Mine are so large, and yours would be perfect on boy or girl."

Rosella remembers having made a comment exactly once before where she thought her earlobes looked fat, but of course Frederick would remember that. She feels herself glowing a little -- she knows he doesn't really care about what his ears look like, but he's so good to her.

"Buttering me up, huh?" she says.

"As is my duty and pleasure," Frederick replies.

"It's mine, too," she says. The warmth of his cheek is lovely, but she slips from his grip and then reaches to tug at the ribbon tie at his collar. It comes loose with a tug and unfurls, and then she reaches for his top button. "You just relax." 

Frederick chuckles, a low rumble at the back of his throat that she feels through her thighs, but he does just that: he keeps his head laid in her lap and he closes his eyes, letting her unbutton his shirt enough to slip a hand in to touch his neck, his collarbone. His skin is warm. She likes feeling him tilt his head towards her touch.

"Don't you get hot in that stuffy shirt?" she asks.

 "It's quite nice without armor, actually," Frederick replies.

She undoes a few more buttons, pulling it open so that his chest is bared to the summer air. She looks down at his chest, all firm muscle framed by the crisp white cotton of his shirt and runs a hand over one of his pecs. With every breath he takes, his chest rises and falls in a way that mesmerizes her. Who wouldn't be?

"My dear," Frederick says. "I think you're enjoying this as much as I am."

"Mmhmm," Rosella hums. "You know, I read that in some cultures they use skin-to-skin contact as a way of building intimacy."

Frederick opens his eyes then, sly.

"Do you think we need to build intimacy?"

"We have it in spades," Rosella says. "But I'm your wife and right now I want to touch you all over the place just because I can."

Frederick chuckles, and he reaches up to unbutton a few more buttons. His chest rises with a deep breath, and she admires the way his ribs arc.

 "In public!" she gasps, playfully. "Frederick... you don't even walk around our quarters shirtless..."

"If someone lays even a single step in this orchard," he tells her, "I will have this shirt back on in an instant."

Even so, he finishes unbuttoning his shirt to the bottom, and Rosella grins when he lifts his hips enough to untuck the back of his shirt free of his trousers. Rosella looks down at the groove of his hip, his iliac furrow -- she should think of a nickname for every part of his body –– and she lets her hand slide down towards his groin, rippling over his abs and resting with her fingertips flush with his belt line.

"I would go further," Rosella says, "but with your head on my lap, I can't reach without it being weird."

Frederick just smiles faintly and shifts, rolling to his side. A tingle goes down Rosella's spine when he softly brushes up her tank top to press his face to the bare skin of her abdomen, and he slides that hand up her slide, under her shirt. He kisses her stomach and she feels the tickle of his breath. 

"I'm happy to touch you too," he murmurs.

And he does.

 


End file.
